Domestic Terrorism Against Mothers Seeking Housing

“Housing is a human right” is the call from the group of Black and brown women who call themselves “Moms 4 Housing”. Tuesday morning around 5:15 a.m, a two-month-long standoff around housing rights ended when deputies, with an armored truck, battering ram, and a tactical robot arrived at the 2928 Magnolia St. property to forcefully remove (and arrest) several of the women, their children, and their supporters.   Moms 4 Housing is a collective of houseless and marginally housed mothers. Their website says, “Before we found each other, we felt alone in this struggle. But there are thousands of others like . . .

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Jailhouse Lawyers Speak “general open” membership for prisoners

Revolutionary greetings to all freedom fighters and supporters for prisoners human rights: On a southern plantation (prison) JLS was founded in 2015 amongst a group of Jailhouse Lawyers who were already in unity as a cadre-based upon the studies of George L. Jackson. This original group of comrades makes up the current central committee. Today, Jailhouse Lawyers Speak (JLS) is a national collective of imprisoned persons who fight for human rights, by providing other prisoners with access to legal education, resources, and assistance. Our focus is on challenging laws that are dehumanizing prisoners and educating prisoners about these laws. We . . .

Abolition Beyond The Binary

“The prison, therefore, functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited, relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate numbers. This is the ideological work that the prison performs—it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism.” Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? According to the Prison Policy Initiative, the American criminal justice system currently holds almost 2.3 million people in 1,719 state prisons, 109 federal prisons, 1,772 . . .

To HWS: an Open Letter of Resignation

For my own sanity and overall well-being, I will not be returning to Hobart and William Smith Colleges this fall as an enrolled student. I have not absolved myself from accountability. By providing context for my actions, I seek to expand the scope of what needs to be accounted for.  It had only taken me half of my first semester to learn that racism at HWS was silent and coded most of the time and grotesquely blatant at other times. During that semester, I was confronted by peers with similar critiques of the institution who wanted to speak out against . . .